Luís Montenegro’s PSD achieved a victory in this Sunday’s local councils that was based on the five main Portuguese municipalities, with the conquest of Porto, Sintra and Vila Nova de Gaia to join the re-election of Carlos Moedas in Lisbon and the predictable passing of testimony in Cascais. But the fact of controlling the largest municipalities, in coalition with the CDS (in all but Sintra) and with the Liberal Initiative (in all but Cascais), which is happening for the first time since 2005, and regaining the leadership of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities, lost 12 years ago, does not mean that everything has gone perfectly for the coalition that governs Portugal.
Despite the night described by the Prime Minister as “historic” – he made a point of saying that the PSD won in the homelands of José Luís Carneiro (Baião), André Ventura (Sintra) and Pedro Nuno Santos (São João da Madeira) – it started well for the center-rightwith television projections giving an advantage to Carlos Moedas, Pedro Duarte (Porto), Marco Almeida (Sintra) and Luís Filipe Menezes (Vila Nova de Gaia), even though the first three were in a technical draw with their socialist rivals, the PS compensated for the defeats of Alexandra Leitão and Manuel Pizarro in the country’s main cities with the conquest of five district capitals.
Two of these socialist victories were expected, proving that the division in the right-wing electorate helped António Pina to be elected in Faro, and that the erosion of the CDU led Carlos Zorrinho to win Évora, but the victory of former minister Ana Abrunhosa over the incumbent José Manuel Silva in Coimbra was doubtful and that of former deputy Isabel Ferreira in Bragança was anything but clear. Even more surprising was the conquest of Viseu, for the first time in the history of democracy, with João Azevedo defeating the veteran social democrat Fernando Ruas. A picture that could have been even more positive if the indications of victory in Braga had been confirmed, where the until now councilor João Rodrigues supplanted the veteran socialist António Braga by very little.
This succession of victories led the general secretary of the PS, José Luís Carneiro, to defend that the electoral collapse suffered in the last legislative elections had been stopped, avoiding what he said was a path to irrelevance identical to that of the French socialists. And he also highlighted what he said was the role of socialists in confronting the “advance of the extreme right”, referring to the maintenance of hegemony in the Algarve.
For Chega, which had elected just 19 councilors in the 2021 municipal councils, the night was bittersweet, with results that clearly fell short of the best expectations. André Ventura had mentioned the possibility of winning three dozen chamber presidencies, and the party expected to win more than a dozen, between the Algarve, Alentejo, the Setúbal Peninsula and Ribatejo. Victories were confirmed in Albufeira, Entroncamento and São Vicente (Madeira), with tangential defeats in municipalities such as Montijo, Sesimbra and Benavente. Despite good results in municipalities such as Sintra, being the second largest force in much of the national territory and having elected 137 councilors, André Ventura had to recognize that, in contrast to the legislative elections, which gave the second largest parliamentary group to Chega, “it was not the night we wanted”.
For different reasons, the same happened to the CDU, which lost the two district capitals it still held (Setúbal and Évora) and was reduced to 12 presidencies and 93 councilors, although it regained Aljustrel, Montemor-o-Novo, Mora and Sines. Conversely, he lost Serpa, Vidigueira, Viana do Alentejo, Monforte, Alcácer do Sal and Grândola, to the socialists, and Santiago Cacém, to an independent supported by the PSD and the PS. Even more surprising was the loss of Sobral de Monte Agraço, in this case to a PSD-CDS-MPT coalition, and of Benavente, also to the PSD-CDS.
In addition to the dozens of victories in coalition with the PSD – including the historic surprise of winning the Chamber of Beja from the PS -, the CDS was able to maintain its six chambers (Ponte de Lima, Albergaria-a-Velha, Oliveira do Bairro, Vale de Cambra, Santana and Velas). Although one of the centrists’ big “solo” bets, with Hélder Amaral’s candidacy for the Viseu Chamber, did not even allow him to be elected as a councilor.
For the Liberal Initiative, in addition to the entry of most executives from the largest national authorities (Lisbon, Porto, Sintra and Vila Nova de Gaia), it was the night that the party made its debut in electing councilors in its own name. It happened in Castelo Branco and Braga, where former leader Rui Rocha was running. The Bloco de Esquerda and Livre had greater difficulties, although the latter maintained the winning coalition with the PS in Felgueiras.
Also noteworthy was Nós Cidadãos, a party that has served as a “white label” for independents, with victories in Belmonte and Soure, as well as in Guarda, in this case in coalition with the PPM, re-electing the already president Sérgio Costa, a former social democrat who had won in 2021, at the head of a citizens’ movement. In Madeira, Santa Cruz remained a stronghold of Juntos pelo Povo, now present in the Assembly of the Republic and which in these local authorities was the second most voted force in the autonomous region. As for independents, elected by citizens’ movements, they continue to be well represented, with 20 victories (one more than in 2021), including that of Isaltino Morais in Oeiras, and that of the returned Maria das Dores Meira in Setúbal, in both cases with support from the PSD.